TrueNAS, or, How I Rediscovered The Joy of Owning My Media

A few weeks ago, a relative called me up and asked me if I had a use-case for an old computer of hers. It was one that I had built around ten years ago for her work. We are talking pre-pre-last-gen components. But how could I refuse? It was free, and in perfectly working condition. So I agreed, and a few days after that, I owned another computer. However, I did not intend to use it as a computer. Again, the components were all relatively old, so running any modern operating system on that, while possible, would not be the best use-case.

Instead, I decided to finally go ahead and do what I had been planning for about a year at this point: Turn it into a NAS, or Network Attached Storage. I actually needed one of these little network-storages for quite some time. Ever since I started my PhD and suddenly had to deal with large datasets in the tens of Gigabytes in size, my computer’s storage turned out to be a really scarce resource. Furthermore, all I ever had to back up data to was an old, crappy 1 Terabyte HDD. I had replaced that with a more modern 1 TB NVMe SSD with USB 3 support, but even that was quickly outgrown by the necessity to have more space available. For the past several years, I had no space left to back up anything. All the photos on my phone were essentially unique, and I didn’t have any meaningful computer backup either. This led to quite a few sweaty trips outside of Europe, where I was plagued by the fear of getting robbed. Luckily, that fear didn’t materialize. But running on luck should not be a strategy for maintaining access to our data — especially in a time when everything is born-digital and there are no physical copies left.

So in that case, it was a godsend that I suddenly got a working computer for free. And even though it consisted exclusively of old components, it was perfectly suitable for use as … a server!

Building a NAS During a Storage Crisis

Now, the one thing it decisively did not have was a lot of storage. All there was in the computer was a 128 GB SSD for the operating system. Given that my existing 1 TB of “backup” didn’t suffice, a tenth of that would be even less sufficient. So the first order was to actually do spend some money to get storage. But, in case you forgot, we’re still in the center of the AI Bubble, and storage prices have surged in lockstep with memory pricing. Not as drastic, but still very expensive. But it didn’t help — the perspective of finally having a safe haven for my data was important, and since I do earn some money, I can afford even heavily inflated prices.

So I went shopping. After some research, I figured out that I wanted to get a set of Seagate IronWolf HDDs. Since I want to have redundancy built-in, I opted for 3×4 TB of HDDs. But, understandably, these hard drives were either available via dubious third-party sellers on Amazon, or plain sold-out. So no luck. In the end, I received my three disks with the right capacity and from the right company, only a slightly different model. I threw them into the computer, installed TrueNAS (a very popular operating system for running NAS systems). I was pleased when quite literally everything worked out of the box. While typically, something goes wrong, here, everything went flawlessly. So I set up all my storage and the system, and spent a day transferring not just the one Terabyte of existing data onto the NAS, but also set up a backup for my laptop. So now I actually have a 3-2-1 backup strategy, and can be much less afraid of losing my phone or laptop. Don’t get me wrong, that would still suck hard, but at least I would still have 100 % of all my data available. Which is a big relief.

Rediscovering my Music

But when I checked the used storage (now I had 8 TB), I saw that, after cleaning everything up, the storage was only used up to about 10 %. It turns out that 8 TB of space is much more than I needed at the moment. So I asked myself: Do I have anything else that I could just collect centrally here?

Then it hit me: I still have all my music library somewhere! … at least that’s what I hoped. But I couldn’t find it; neither on my old 1 TB HDD, nor anywhere else. After a day of searching, I did fortunately find it on a hidden place on my other computer. And so I began moving that over to my NAS.

Some background: When I first discovered the joy of listening to good music as a teenager, I quickly made a habit of buying albums I quite enjoyed. Now, back then, we went around with hard drives and shared them to get more music. But I quickly decided for myself that I should rather actually pay the artists. And so I bought quite a few CDs over the years. In the end, I believe I had over a 100 different albums on CD. Then, I also got a vinyl player (shortly before that was trendy again, so I was for once ahead of the curve!) including the corresponding records.

Because back then we still had CD drives, I ensured I kept all of my music also digitally backed up. At some point, my CDs vanished into some basement, but the music was still on my computer. Some time in the early 2010s, the website Bandcamp started to gain traction. The idea was simple: We all don’t have too much space for CDs, and CD isn’t the best medium anyhow, so why not just offer people FLAC-files in high quality directly? This skips a middle-man we all were happy to leave behind (the CD-ROM drive), and possibly some logistics, too. It was a win-win for artists and fans alike.

Except in 2007 or so when I first discovered it, most labels were still firmly in the hands of the traditional distribution systems, and did not consider Bandcamp. What was on there was mostly niche bands without record labels who just uploaded their own music. (By the way, until today, there’s also an album I produced entirely myself available for free download. Let me know if you believe you found it!)

So while I did purchase a couple albums from Bandcamp, that remained a rare occurrence — not the least because I was a poor high school/university student.

Spotify and the Death of Choice

Also, a few years after that, streaming became a common occurrence. When it became popular, I switched to Spotify, and a few years ago, when the enshittification of that service became unbearable, I switched to Apple Music. The latter service at least pays their artists somewhat decently, and is not half as ugly as the Swedish start-up.¹

And I can tell you exactly when I started to use Spotify: 2017. Because that’s when my music library stops. I stopped paying artists, and paid a multinational conglomerate of international corporations instead. A few weeks ago, the last album in my library was from 2017. It was “You’re Not as ___ as You Think” from Sorority Noise. After that, I just stopped buying albums directly.

At first, Spotify seemed like the promised land: Just listen to music when you want to, and what you want. No need to either endure YouTube advertisements or paying for an entire album, even though you don’t yet know if you really like it enough. But soon, it turned out more and more to be … exhausting.

You see, there’s this phenomenon called “choice overload.” When you are faced with too many options to choose from, it becomes harder and harder to decide. And Spotify causes this, too. Since essentially all the music on planet earth was part of their catalogue, it became harder and harder to decide.

When we want to listen to music, we usually only have a vague idea. Now, if we are on Spotify, we could find the perfect song for the moment. But what if we don’t find it? We start to skip through song after song because all of them have something that we don’t like. In the end, we just don’t listen to anything really, tune in to one of their “mood” playlists, or start the auto-DJ. So in the end, we let an algorithm decide.

But now I had my music back. And that felt like breaking free. Because I suddenly had scarcity again. There is no perfect song for every moment, and that’s okay. Instead, now I have my very limited library of music, but which is heavily curated by the only person who knows what I really enjoy — me. I know both that I will never find the perfect song, but at the same I know that I don’t have any weird albums in my library. And it felt so relieving, finally being able to decide what to listen to again. Making it impossible for you to maybe making the perfect decision, it becomes possible to make a fine decision again.

Open Source has Gotten a Long Way

Another pleasant discovery I made after I transferred all my music to my NAS was that Open Source really has gotten a long way. I still vividly remember my uphill battle against Ubuntu 06.04 back in the day. But this was almost exactly 20 years ago. And in those two decades, a lot has happened. Here are pleasant discoveries I made in terms of being able to access my own music again with modern software:

• TrueNAS just works out of the box. No weird issues. I just had my storage, and could transfer data. Period.
• It offers FOSS apps to enhance the NAS, and turn it from a simple storage device to a media server. Among them, a streaming service on top of your own music.
• Tailscale, a weirdly satisfying, “It just works™” VPN with which I can always remotely access my data if I need to.
• And, to my pleasant surprise, a variety of iOS ready apps from Immich for my photo backup to Amperfy, which even has a macOS client!

Essentially, I now have a full replication of Apple Music, but on top of my existing music library. Everything works literally as well as with Apple Music. Only with one difference: Now, I can finally pay artists (almost) directly again.

Bandcamp and Why Owning Music is the Ethical Choice

This brings me back to the title of this post. Now that I have the space and now that my music is accessible again and no longer on some forgotten SSD somewhere in my flat — why not do the deed and buy all the albums I only streamed for the past ten years?

I did some quick napkin math recently. The average album on Bandcamp (and, before that, CDs) costs about $10, sometimes more, sometimes less. It typically includes somewhere around 10 songs. A single stream gives an artist about $0.01. (Remember: With Spotify it’s much worse, Apple Music is one of the better services.) So you’d have to listen to the average album 100 times before an artist probably gets this amount of money. Also, I bet that the $0.01 is possibly an optimistic estimate, so I might have to stream an album more often to give an artist the equivalent they would get if I directly bought their music.

And, let’s be frank: How long are you ready to listen to an album on Apple Music (or, Spotify, which takes much, much longer) before you can’t stand it anymore? I bet that threshold is reached far before you actually gave your favorite artist the money they deserve. That’s why I find it also relieving to have gotten back to just owning my music again.

First, if I pay for it upfront, it’s only $10, but I own the music. And then I can stream it, maybe even more than 100 times. But I don’t have the pressure to do so. And even if I never listen to that album ever again — I still supported an artist I deemed worthy of support, and did not defer the decision whom to pay to a multinational corporation.

Now, one caveat though: When I was a student, Spotify was a great boon. I could discover and listen to artists as much as I liked for a price that I could afford back then. Paying for every album is not entirely cheap, and so I get that these music streaming services enable low-SES groups to enjoy music they like without going into debt. But I believe those of us who can — and I certainly can — afford to buy music directly should do so. Because this way, we not only support artists much better than making them throw their music out for crumbs, but also enable poorer people to enjoy music.

Final Thoughts

When I got the opportunity to receive this old computer and turn it into a NAS, I expected just a way to finally offload some of my data to a more secure space. I did not expect the revelations that came with it. I neither expected to suddenly feel so much more relieved because I know my data is securely backed up, nor that I would start to rediscover the joy of enjoying music.

It really seems to be true: We’ve played through the internet, and now it is time for a “return to monke,” or how that meme goes. With proper broadband access wherever we are, and with cheap electricity to run a computer 24/7, we can stop relying on SaaS-businesses more and more. Now, having a NAS is a privilege that not everyone has. And I strongly believe that we are a far cry from when we can finally stop relying on enshittified services. But I see that there is a path.

So, if you have the disposable income and the time to do so, I invite you: Set up a NAS, stop paying for music streaming, and just set up your own streaming service. The feeling is incredible.

In the past two weeks, I have dumped I believe $100 onto some of the albums I came to enjoy in the past ten years but never owned. And now I finally do. And it feels great. I think I may even concoct a few music recommendations some time this year — so stay tuned!